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Mexicans in the Midwest, 1900-1932. By Juan R. Garcia. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996. x, 292 pp. $39.95.
Even after three decades of research on Mexican migration to the Midwest, many scholars are still surprised at the wealth of documentation previously ignored by Euro-American scholars. University of Arizona historian Juan Garcia contributes to the enlightenment. His work, however, cannot be read in isolation. Indeed, he is one of an impressive group of Chicano/a scholars admitted to the University of Notre Dame, through the intervention of Dr. Julian Samora, a noted Chicano sociologist who mentored these students in the days when race equality was still an acceptable goal, and these Samora scholars in turn generated knowledge of the area which would have been surely lost without them. Mexicans in the Midwest, 1900-1932 also complements the author's Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954 (1980), which was based on his dissertation and is an important work in the historiography of Chicanos.
The current book is a balanced narrative on the beginnings of Mexican migration to the Midwest, giving attention to the importance of the railroads in the migration process. Garcia acknowledges that Mexicans were attractive to railroad interests, not only because of "the curtailment of immigration from Asia and the European's preference for year-round employment and higher wages had led to a severe labor shortage" but because Mexicans had previous experience in this type of labor (6). Indeed, the...